For anyone with an entrepreneurial streak in them, starting a business is the ultimate challenge. If you already have a background in tech and you are looking for a career that will position you to start your own business eventually, here are six you should consider.

Software Architect

As the name suggests, software architects are responsible for overseeing a software project’s overall design and structure. The software architect functions like a director, coordinating the other individuals involved in the development process. When there are debates or disagreements among software engineers about how best to proceed, it is up to the architect to consider the options and make a final decision.

Most software architects will also have a background in software design or development. The critical skill that separates a software architect from a regular engineer is communication. To function effectively as a project overseer and act as a tiebreaker when your team can’t agree, you need to communicate appropriately and be diplomatic when necessary. If you cannot articulate your decisions or reasoning to your team, they are much less likely to fall in line and accept your choices.

There is no specific degree that a software architect needs to possess, but most software architects will hold at least a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a similar field. 

That said, software architecture is a role that favors experience over education. If you have already spent time working with software professionally, you might not need a degree at all to work as a software architect. You could even choose to study for a doctoral or master’s degree while working as a software architect. Taking this approach will enable you to specialize in a specific area of interest to you.

User Experience Designer

User experience design is a varied discipline that brings together a range of different skills. To excel as a user experience designer, you will need to have a good grasp of psychology, business, and software design. 

The user experience refers to every interaction that a user has with your service. Whenever they load up a new page or even just click on a button, they interact with you somehow. Ensuring that these interactions are always a positive experience for the user is the user experience designer’s responsibility.

The precise details of a user experience designer’s day to day work will vary from business to business and project to project. A user experience designer might find themselves working mostly with HTML5 as they help to polish the web experience for their users. Or, they might find themselves experimenting with augmented reality and virtual reality, looking for ways of providing a solid user experience on these nascent platforms.

Many user experience designers, including those working with VR, are dabbling in technologies that are still relatively new. In these cases, there is no existing playbook for how businesses should approach interface design. This arrangement puts user experience designers in a position to work on devising the best solution while potentially setting the standards that other designers will adhere to.

Operations Management

Operations managers are responsible for overseeing the production of products and services, and the use of company resources, materials, and equipment. There is a range of skills that will be useful for anyone pursuing a role in operations management. A solid grounding in tech can help you a lot.

For many people, a big part of the appeal of operations management lies in the technological innovations that have underpinned most of the significant progress in the industry over the last decade. Among the numerous technological innovations that have helped the field advance in recent years are the introduction of smartphones into the workplace, the advent of Amazon’s vast delivery network, and the arrival of automation in all its many forms. If you’d like to learn more about the role of automation in operations management, click here for an article from Kettering University that provides an excellent starting point.

For tech-minded entrepreneurs, operations management is an opportunity to work with some of the most important technologies of our time and find ways of using them to enhance operations within a business. There is also a considerable amount of problem-solving and lateral thinking required to excel in operations management. If these are challenges that appeal to you, this is a great career path to pursue.

Of course, to thrive as an operations manager, your understanding of business concepts needs to be as good as your understanding of the tech you encounter. People who are equally passionate about both disciplines will find working as an operations manager a uniquely rewarding experience.

Data Analyst

Everyone knows that data is an incredibly valuable resource for modern businesses. With the right data on their side, businesses can make much more reliable and informed decisions. But in its raw form, data is not much use. To be useful and unlock the power within, you need to process raw data using data analytics.

Data analytics involves using algorithms and computer software to probe data and discover patterns hidden within. With the insight and knowledge gleaned from this analytics process, businesses can turbocharge the decision-making process. Not only does data analytics assist in decision-making, but it is also a vital tool for gaining deeper insights into markets and audiences.

Data analysts are responsible for overseeing the analytics process. They will decide what methods and algorithms to use in their analysis based on the data at hand and what they hope to achieve with it. First, they will look for the optimal way of presenting their results. There are many ways that you can visually represent a set of data, including pie charts, bar graphs, tables, to name just a few.

Choosing the right means of visualizing data is crucial when it comes to explaining your findings. An unclear visualization can make even relatively simple conclusions appear much more convoluted than they really are. A data analyst who cannot to walk other people through their findings will find their job needlessly frustrating. By contrast, an intuitive understanding of how to present data will enable you to clearly convey your conclusions to other people with ease.

Data analysts need to be proficient in many versatile skills that are easily transferable to other roles. Data analysts are working throughout the public and private sectors. As well as assisting businesses in their deployment of data, data analysts also regularly work in government, healthcare, marketing, and other leadership roles.

Quality Assurance Engineer

Quality assurance engineers do vital work throughout the tech industry, ensuring software and hardware quality throughout production. Quality assurance engineers will help to set and enforce company-wide standards. In doing so, they help to ensure that those standards are being respected and adhered to even when the quality assurance engineer isn’t there to oversee things.

Quality assurance engineers have a particularly important role to play in software development teams. As development teams grow and begin to tackle more complex projects, the need for a unified approach becomes even more essential. Quality assurance engineers are just the right people to help devise the best approach and develop a viable way of ensuring that everyone can stick with it.

Quality assurance engineers will be standing by throughout the entire development process. From the concept stage up until the final product is distributed and delivered to the end-user, quality assurance engineers keep a watchful eye over everything.

Note that a quality assurance engineer is different from a software tester. Software testers will use the product at various stages of its development and report their findings back to the development team. Quality assurance engineers sit in on the entire process and take a much more active role in shaping the companies overarching approach to developing software.

Hardware Design Engineer

Many advanced tech businesses need to design and produce their own customized hardware to achieve their objectives. Hardware engineers design this hardware and decide how to manufacturer it. The manufacturing process for new hardware is usually iterative, relying on prototyping to identify and fix any design issues that might arise.

To find work as a hardware design engineer, you will need to have a Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering, computer science, or electrical engineering. If you earn a more advanced degree, more advanced jobs will open up to you.

Some hardware design engineers are working for private businesses, but the bulk are working in research institutions. If you want to be at the cutting edge of hardware development, this is the role to aim for.

These are just some of the many fruitful careers out there for entrepreneurs with a background in tech. If you already hold a university degree in computing or science, this can open a lot of career paths for you. People who already have a science or tech degree will probably want to begin their search with occupations that are related to their field of study. Many tech businesses will favor experience over qualifications. Once you have some experience under your belt, the range of options open to you will expand further.

 

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